1. Field of the Invention
This invention is related to lockers and rooms for storing packages delivered to residents that is controlled via a video interphone system, by a local concierge or guardman and remotely operated over a network or the Internet via an e-services of a virtual doorman.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Room and lockers for storing delivered packages and parcels by couriers, or food and laundry delivery from a nearby or far shops, exist in condominiums, offices and rental apartments buildings for accommodating such deliveries when a tenant is absent or cannot see the deliveryman in person. Such storage rooms may be divided into different rooms, or facilities within one room, including refrigerated storage facilities for groceries and food for example, or hangers for laundry returned items and/or shelves for other packages and parcels. The main doors for such facilities are locked via a mechanical or an electric keys that are operated by the local guardman or the concierge for enabling the delivery person to complete the delivery into the storage room when the tenant is unavailable to receive the package by himself. To retrieve the deliveries each of the tenants has a key, or is provided with a code for opening the mechanical or the electrical lock of the room or rooms at a time of his convenience.
The access by the deliveryman to the storage rooms is only possible when the local guardman or concierge is on site, more over it is the guardman or the concierge who can sign the delivery papers, mostly with the notation that the delivery was stored in the locked room at a given time and date. The problems with such storage rooms is therefore, that it is only possible for the deliveryman to complete the delivery when a guardman or a concierge is on site. Round the clock or 24 hr guardman on site is too costly and cost reductions are being attempted by builders and tenants by the employing the services of a virtual doorman over the Internet.
A virtual doorman can communicate and view the image of the deliveryman, observed by a CCTV camera and propagated over the Internet along with the two way voice communication and only after a verification process, communicated between the operator of the virtual doorman monitoring room and the deliveryman, the operator will open the main door (to the building) and the door to the storage rooms, enabling the deliveryman to enter the building and the storage room without local supervision. This represents serious problems, because the virtual doorman is unable to verify the delivery on one hand, nor to insure the security and the integrity of the delivered packages inside the storage room on the other.
Moreover, the tenants having the key or the codes to enter the storage room, requiring no clearance by the virtual doorman to enter, may themselves tamper with the delivered parcel without any records. Even though the entry can be monitored by an automated system including the recording onto a Digital video recorder, using close circuit television monitoring system, or be identified during the entry to the storage room via other access control means, it is not possible to prevent tampering with the door lock and the door, so that they can exit the room with the doors remain unlocked. This leaves the delivered packages, parcels, food and other items unattended, behind tempered lock or non closed doors, thereby becoming an easy target for thieves, including tenants or outside persons, such as a masqueraded deliveryman.
Other known systems for managing secured lockers for delivery and retrievals of parcels and packages require to preregister and/or the purchase of a coded card or keys for each individual tenant and for each deliveryman and/or the processing of a preordered goods and/or preprogram an accesses to a given locker and/or preprogram a reserved locker, resulting in lengthy verification processes at the time of ordering of goods and for both, the delivery and/or the retrieval. Such systems have proven to be non practical and too complex to handle in day today life, causing failed deliveries, and difficulties in retrievals, increase costs and frustrations.